The invention disclosed herein relates generally to the field of data recorders for use in automobiles, trucks, and other road vehicles. In particular the present invention contemplates an improved automatic electronic data recorder for use in vehicles having a standard odometer-speedometer system which includes a rotatable cable attached to a portion of the vehicle, such as a wheel or transmission, which rotates with vehicle movement.
For various reasons, it has been found necessary or desirable to record certain data relating to the use of road vehicles over the years. For example, taxing authorities in various places and at various times have required records detailing the usage of certain vehicles. Also, employers have desired to keep track of the uses to which their employees put company owned vehicles, and to have an indication of job performance as well. Recently, the Internal Revenue Service has required owners of vehicles used partially for business and partially for personal use to submit detailed records of the usage of these vehicles in order to support business deductions for the cost of operating them. In these and other instances, it has been found advantageous to record such data as time and date, total and elapsed mileage, driver, type of use, origin and destination, and the like.
In the past, a variety of mechanical and electromechanical data recorders have been proposed to record various subsets of the above-identified data items. These prior art data recorders commonly contain a very large number of intricate moving parts interconnected in a complex mechanical arrangement. As a result, the data recorders disclosed by the prior art are expensive to manufacture and difficult to adjust and repair. In addition, replacement parts generally must be manufactured specially and to exact specifications for the specific data recorder being used.
The present invention contemplates an improved automatic electronic vehicular data recorder which eliminates these drawbacks of the prior art data recorders. The vehicular data recorder of the present invention has many fewer moving parts than the prior art data recorders, is generally modular in construction, and can be inexpensively and easily manufactured and repaired, largely using standard off-the-shelf components. At the same time, the present invention contemplates a vehicular data recorder that is largely automatic in operation and which provides a permanent record of date, mileage, driver, and vehicle usage.